Benjamin Gray's Blog

Yesterday, Lenovo announced at LinuxWorld that it will be offering its ThinkPad T Series pre-loaded with Novell’s SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 in Q4. This is significant for Linux on the desktop for businesses because, now, two of the three tier one global PC suppliers to enterprises will be pushing for better software and driver compatibility for Linux. After Dell has flirted with the idea of Ubuntu for SMBs, Lenovo has upped the ante with this offering. And if it wasn’t good enough to convince enterprises to pilot Linux in their environment, Novell is also offering direct support to end customers -- something it hasn’t yet done. The announcement comes at a particularly good time for Novell because it expands its distribution channel significantly at a time that enterprises are struggling with when, why, and how they should deploy Windows Vista. So what does this mean for Microsoft? Almost nothing. Customer choice is good. Competition is good. May the best solution win.